The Coventry Project Tackling the Stigma of Addiction
The exterior of Charlie’s Coffee Shop. Image by Henry T Fox.
Charlie’s Coffee Shop is a café with a mission, providing work and structure to people in recovery from addiction. The Dynamo Project’s flagship coffee shop opened to the public on Hertford Street just this month, with the proceeds going back into supporting people involved with the project in their recovery.
Kieran O’Toole, founder and managing director of The Dynamo Project, said: “It’s all based in bringing recovering people together”.
Their LILAC scheme is a supported housing project for those in recovery, which takes an abstinence-based approach.
Participants have to take part in the charity’s day programme, where they discuss the day ahead, do a group activity like exercise (sometimes with even a personal trainer), relapse prevention work, and addiction awareness. Participants can also avail of a life coach and counselling.
Charlie’s Coffee Shop also functions as a community space. Part of the day programme at LILAC is to spend time working in the coffee shop.
“If people are coming in and they’re struggling with addiction it’s very likely that the person serving them can relate to them”, added Kieran.
The public reaction to the cafe has been overwhelmingly positive, with many saying they preferred to go there rather than to Costa or Starbucks, as they knew their money would be helping a just cause.
Those involved in the charity also host The Drug Squad Cast, a podcast series dedicated to challenging the stigma surrounding addiction. People who have struggled with addiction come out to share their stories.
“I just didn’t know how to live.”
Michelle, who has been clean of heroin and crack cocaine for five years, said: “In the earlier days I managed to keep my business, I had a hairdressing business, and the money I was earning from that would pay for my habit”.
She later lost the business and ended up “basically homeless”, having been taken in by a criminal gang and made to work “behind the windows” in Amsterdam.
“I just didn’t know how to live”, said Michelle.
“It reached a point where it had got so bad and I’d exhausted all options”, she added.
She later went through rehab, wanting to share her story through the Dynamo Project.
#SupportNotStigma. Image courtesy of The Dynamo Project.
The ‘Speak to Charlie’ initiative aims to give addicts a space to talk and seek advice without judgement.
Kieran said: “People think addiction is all about the drugs. If that was the case everyone who ever took a drug would get addicted”.
The root cause of addiction, he claimed, was the reason people take drugs in the first place.
“Until you work on area one [the reason people abuse drugs] nothing’s going to happen”, Kieran said.
“When I took drugs, it gave me what I was lacking, or so I thought”
According to Kieran, the media has gotten a lot better at tackling the stigma of drug addiction in recent years, particularly with the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton’s activism on behalf of addicts and patronage of The Forward Trust, a charity focusing on helping those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.
The royal said in a video posted earlier this year: “We as a society need to recognise that the only way to help those suffering is to try and understand what has led them to addiction, to empathise with them and to be compassionate to their struggles.”
Kieran emphasised that detox is only the first step to recovery, and that after that is when the work has to begin to heal.
